Berry Good Birding

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 The Buff-bellied Hummingbird that became our first bird of the New Year yesterday morning had to get up early to beat this guy:  the little Yellow-throated Warbler that won the honors a few years ago.  Maybe his calendar is a day off--this morning he was the first bird I saw when I went out on the front deck.  The sun rose at 7:16 this morning--and this photo was taken less than four minutes later. Using the camera's flash, I was able to get a picture that shows both the bird and the interesting berries.

Black-crested Titmouse

 Gleaning insects from among the ripening berries of a Queen Palm tree beside the deck, the warbler looks even more picturesque than usual. I had taken a picture of the berries by themselves yesterday, but decided not to put it in my post.  It just lacked something

But today the birds were as attracted to the fruit as I was--me for the beauty of the green-turning-orange berries; the birds for little insects drawn to the sticky sweet fruits. Today's photos have the missing element--birds!

The  fruit will get more orange still as it continues to ripen.  Some berries attract birds for the fruit, some for the insects they lure.  This one will eventually attract the Golden-fronted Woodpeckers that eat the berries and maybe Green Jays and Grackles.  It'll be interesting to watch and see what other birds are drawn by the magnet.

Orange-crowned Warbler

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

A Pine Warbler and a Ruby-crowned Kinglet lit briefly on the palm, too, but I wasn't quick enough to capture them in that pose.  I did get the warbler investigating a flowerpot.

That's the kinglet on the bath with the tiny yellow feet grasping the dripper hose.  I had never noticed  before that they wear "golden slippers"--in a much smaller size than Snowy Egrets of course.

The most exciting bird of the day was one I didn't see in the yard at all last year.  In fact, I've seen it only twice before--the Clay-colored Thrush.  (The last time I saw one, it was still called the Clay-colored Robin and was considered rare enough that it was on the state's rarities list.)  Though it remained in the yard, and the neighbor's yard, for quite a while this afternoon eating ripe red berries from the Brazilian Pepper tree, I didn't have my camera. (I was getting error messages and had to charge the batteries.) 

[Edited on Monday morning:  When I first went out to walk the driveway this morning, the Clay-colored cutie was right there on the bird bath.  Too early for good light, too late to remember a tripod, too far away for a flash, but I did the best I could.  The color shows fairly well--isn't it lovely? The interesting greenish bill is also apparent.  I intend to continue my paparazzi-like stalking throughout the day.]

Thinking it might be a White-throated Thrush (really rare, a Mexican bird that has shown up in the upper Valley this winter), I wasn't about to run in the house, change batteries on the camera, and miss the bird.  Trying to take pictures with my iphone resulted in one fuzzy blob and several pictures of leaves. I did get  a recording of its sort of cat-like call.  The color of a Clay-colored Thrush  is a soft distinctive brown, unlike any other bird really.  Its throat was whiter than I remembered and streaked, but no matter what,  I couldn't turn it into the White-throated Thrush.
Tomorrow I'll be stalking the elusive bird with camera in hand and hope to have a picture of the really pretty robin.



I'll finish with one more photo of a Buff-bellied Hummingbird, the early bird that was yesterday's New Year's baby, er..birdy.   This one was sitting in the same fiddlewood as yesterday making its soft little call (unusual because it has a typically loud call that I described yesterday).  Notice how its green throat is bluish?  Some field guides don't even mention that bluish throat.  Maybe they haven't seen it in the early morning sun along the banks of the Arroyo Colorado.

Blind Spot

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Today was so lovely that I spent much of it outside.  It was just cool enough (high somewhere in the 70's) that I could sit in what is becoming one of my favorite spots:  a chair blind under the anacua tree beside the driveway.  It's a little folding lawn chair enclosed in a small attached tent with zip-out windows.  The birds can't see me--or if they do they are not alarmed--and I can get pictures of them at the birdbaths close by.  The Northern Mockingbird above was one of my first visitors. He's taking a break from defending the ripening fiddlewood berries on the shrubs near the deck.

Another bather was this stunning bird--a Yellow-throated Warbler that hung upside down on a branch of the oak tree and then flittered in to the terra cotta saucer-baths.   A common yard bird for us in the winter, it's nonetheless a special guest.

Green Jays are all over the yard, having had an apparently very successful nesting season.   Even noisier today than the Kiskadees, with buzzy croaks and snores and cheh-cheh-chehs, the jays ruled the yard.  The bather above looked unusual with its outer yellow tail feathers being the only ones in its tail! The jay below, messily eating the orange suet cake,  displays the blue/green tail that is typical. 

Green Jays don't seem to fly long distances.  They fly from tree to tree, landing near the bottom and hopping to higher branches. They follow one another, tails flashing yellow V's of those outer tail feathers,  and make a ruckus with their odd sounds.

Black-crested Titmouse

Other birds I saw at the baths from my "blind spot" included Carolina Wrens, Black-crested Titmice , a White-throated Sparrow, a Baltimore Oriole, Orange-crowned Warblers, an Ovenbird, Great-tailed Grackles, Red-winged Blackbirds, Lesser Goldfinches, and lots and LOTS of House Sparrows.


Since the wind was relatively calm today, I could hear birds all around me as I sat in the blind.  Once, as  I played my Ibird Pro app to hear the call of a White-throated Sparrow, the sound of wings and feet on the camouflage tent fabric startled me.  I think it was the titmouse pictured above but I was "blind" in my blind, at least to what was going on over my head.

While I was trying to get a picture of the warbler I heard loud familiar calls clattering overhead.  It was a sound I knew I should know--but since it was out of place in that part of the yard, I couldn't quite figure out what it was.  To get a good look at the noisy mystery birds, I would have had to climb awkwardly out of the little chair/tent contraption I was in, a  move that would scare all the birds at the baths, so I remained where I was.

Later, when my neighbor told me he had seen five large Ringed Kingfishers flying over our yards south of the houses calling loudly their wild clattering rattle, I realized what I had heard.  We usually see this largest of our three species of kingfishers on the north side of the yards, along the river, in ones or twos, but today they were flying high in a group over the front yards. Later from the deck I took a photo of one of them. He's just a dot above the palms, but that shape is unmistakable.  I missed the parade of five of the chattering giant kingfishers, but I didn't miss their chatter! 

The most contant bird sound of the day was one that might be my favorite:  the resonant rolling call of the Sandhill Cranes as they fly overhead to the fields across the way.

When I wasn't in the blind, I was on the deck that overlooks the front yard, another favorite viewing spot, especially nice since it's attached to the upstairs of the house and is convenient for viewing birds before I'm even dressed for the day--pajama birding.  This morning I was rewarded for putting niger thistle in the finch feeder by a visit from American Goldfinchs and Pine Siskins.  The siskin is especially welcome since it is not often here and because it reminds me of bird-feeding in Oklahoma when my children were young.  Whenever it snowed, and the finches were thick around the feeders, my son would stand with arms outstretched and birdseed in his upturned palms, waiting for almost-tame-with-hunger pine siskins to eat from his hands.

A Carolina Wren serenaded me from the bougainvillea nearest the deck, the reddish-brown of his breast especially bright, maybe because of the morning sun and maybe because it echoed the deep apricot of the nearby blooms.


Out by the road a small brown bird with a white eye-ring called to an echoing bird in a brasil tree.  It was too far to see just what it was though its call was distinctive.  I'll figure out what it is and maybe post that later.  For now, I'm including its picture because the background, so different from the wren's blooming backdrop, looks almost like trees in winter in northern climates.  Of course, what it's actually perching in is not winter woods, but a brush-pile of dead branches.

Our trees are still green with foliage, but the winter of my imagination (where branches are bare and snowy Pine Siskins eat from a little boy's hand) can almost be seen in this picture.

Nature's People

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Just in case you think all we have in the yard are birds, or in case you are tired of photos of orioles, I'll begin with a beautiful fellow I found in the neighbor's yard yesterday morning, a Texas Indigo Snake.  Moments before this photo was taken, the snake was winding its full four or five feet at a leisurely pace along a flower bed and water sprinkler.  But  when I rushed over with my camera, it quickly slithered away under a plumbago shrub against a fence. Like poet  Emily Dickinson's  snake in "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" :  

"it  wrinkled,  and  was  gone."

I thought I'd been foiled again, but I took this picture anyway, aiming the camera back in the shadows.  Surprisingly, the photo turned out okay.  You can see the deep indigo blue of its back end coiled up by the lighter face with the little whisker-like marks radiating out from the eye.  I love these creatures and think they are among the most beautiful in the yard.  I've seen pictures of them eating rattlesnakes,  and I'm always ready to tell that to people who declare they hate snakes and have guns to kill them with (unfortunately I've heard that said a surprising number of times around here). I don't think Dickinson would kill a snake, but even she who can describe one so well says they make her feel "zero to the bone."  She's one of my favorite poets, but I'll disagree with her on that.

Now to the orioles!  I've spent the weekend watching  Hooded Orioles that returned just a few days ago.  At first glance they look like the resident Altamira Orioles.  When we first moved to the Rio Grande Valley and I had never before seen either species, I confused the two.  The Altamira is a little larger, a relative field mark not too helpful if  the two birds aren't side by side.  In the photo to the left here is a Hooded Oriole and to the right an Altamira Oriole. You can see two distinguishing features easily -- the Altamira has an orange shoulder patch notching a little "v" in the top front of the black wing, and the Hooded does not.  That's probably the most helpful field mark, the one a field guide would point an arrow at.  The shape of the black facial patch is different, too.  Some field guides say the Altamira has a mask because the black goes from the beak back to the eye and is narrower on the throat. On the Hooded Oriole the black goes down from the eye, covering more of the face and throat--see what I mean?

If you look closely at the Hooded Oriole on the left, you can see that the beak is slightly decurved, or pointed downward, another distinguishing mark, but it's the orange shoulder patch that I always look for first.  Of course, once you have welcomed these guys to your home and hung around with them, you know them from a distance just like you know each of your grandkids running  towards you,  even from way across the park.

Using those two field marks, you could answer the photo quiz from my last post, right?  And a special "GOOD JOB!" to  Caleb, my smart grandson who may have also had help from his equally smart younger siblings.  (Not his baby sister, though--she hasn't looked through a pair of binoculars yet,  but just a few more months and she'll be birding with the rest of us.) I think most of you identified the orioles correctly-- Orioles A and B in the quiz were Hooded Orioles and Oriole C was an Altamira Oriole, all eating nectar in the bottlebrush tree in our yard. (If you're not sure what I'm talking about, see the post below that I wrote a few days ago.)

The Hooded Orioles were busy this weekend checking out the prime real estate in the neighborhood-- the tall Washingtonian Palm Trees where they  make nests every summer.  Here's a photo of one male that perched on a palm above our deck yesterday afternoon and called out "wheat!" over and over.  He was repeatedly answered by two other "wheat!"s  from two other palm trees.  This went on for quite some time. 

I don't know if other male orioles were answering the calls.  I'm assuming a female Hooded Oriole was within hearing distance, since the male I watched was being such a show-off.   At one point he fanned his tail, making it look in miniature like the palm frond he perched on. I hope this photo shows up well enough for you to see the black tail feathers---it  was extremely neat to watch.  (Click on the photo to enlarge it.)  

Today I finally saw a female Hooded Oriole,  first in a shrub near the palm where she looked very lemony yellow below, more greenish yellow on her back.  Then later I photographed a male and female together eating an orange half.  Unlike the Altamira Orioles whose males and females look pretty much alike, the male and female Hooded Orioles are distinct.  Aren't they a cute couple?

I'm still on the lookout for migrants,  but so far most of our birds at the baths and feeders have been birds that show up here only in the winter.  The Gray Catbird is still here and the Black and White, Orange-crowned,  and Yellow-rumped Warblers. This weekend's new birds for 2010 were  a Yellow-throated Warbler and an American Robin, both brief winter and early spring visitors.

April begins in a couple of days, a fabulous birding month here at home.  I love to see the exciting birds that pass through for a day or two--I'm still fluttering about last week's close encounter with a Swallow-tailed Kite--but I also especially love the ones that stay awhile and  build nests, raise young. I like to get to know them, not merely tick them off my list. I understand why Emily Dickinson refers to them as  people:

"Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality"

         (click this link to read Dickinson's "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass")

I don't share Dickinson's view of a snake that made her feel such a cold uneasiness, but I too know "nature's people." I look forward to the just beginning nesting season when I am a nature watcher and not just a lister.  I think getting to know nature does transport us to a better world.  We could sometimes use a little more "cordiality."